Blueprint courses vs Cross-listing

Deciding whether to use a Blueprint course, cross-list or commons can be overwhelming.

This ridiculous flowchart (see attached for a pdf version) is a very late response post to Tracey DeLillo's reply on the Blueprint release notes back in August. Commons really isn’t utilized currently by our instructors. They mainly just add each other into each other’s courses as designers and share by importing specific content.

A basic summary of my workflow for when people come asking for help

My first questions always is: How many instructors? If only 1 instructor, cross-list. My reasoning is at most they will have 3 sections. They can use differentiated assignment for due dates and since it is just them they have full control over mute assignment when grading.

Multiple instructors… things get tricky

If it is only a few teachers I’d say less than 3 they can go either cross-list or blueprint. More than 3, I usually recommend blueprint if they have a designated course lead.

Cross-list

Blueprint

Updating content

Instant updating of all content by all users. All teachers have access to everybody’s content and can update/delete or do whatever it is they do.

Designated users sync for specified shared content

Grading – Mute Assignment

Mute assignment for grading is connected to all sections. When teachers mute/unmute all the students in all sections are impacted. So you if teachers don’t coordinate well or you have a slow grader, grades maybe released in a very confusing manner to students

Courses are their own entities’. Grading one section has no affect to any other sections (unless teacher has cross-listed their own sections)

This is a great concept. I would include some understanding of cross-listed courses only working on one shell. Some may look at this and think that they can create in multiple shells and have all that content available once the shells are cross-listed and that isn't the case. At least this is the way that it works at our institution.